


Five times I ruined my daughter's life (and one time she saved mine)

by Kastaka



Category: Not If I Save You First - Ally Carter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: Feelings were never really my job; nobody trained me in how to be a father.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Five times I ruined my daughter's life (and one time she saved mine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nerissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/gifts).



**Time The First: That Time I Almost Ruined Her Dress**

It was true, that the President hadn't killed a deer.

He let the Senator take the shot.

I thought they were going to smell the blood on me, the scent of its fear, and I didn't want them to encounter either.

So I let him establish that we smelled bad, and so she didn't try too hard to work it out. And at that age she let me get away with it.

I didn't lie to them, though. I'd have told them the whole story if I had to.

I save lying for when I really have to. Just like the gun.

So it was true, everything I said. He really was more interested in getting a vote out of the senator for Kentucky. It's easier to get people to do what you want them to, when they think they've got one over on you.

And also when they're only ten years old. That helps a lot, too.

I'd never have got it past her six years later.

\----

**Time The Second: That Time I Shot Some Guys In Front Of Her**

I never even wanted to draw my gun in front of her.

This is why there is so much training. Because otherwise I would have covered her, not my charge. I would have bundled her off to safety and the devil take the hindmost.

That was what every instinct that I was born with, every instinct that had been instilled by her first cry of life, told me to do.

But the training took over. Civilians are to hide. Assailants are to be neutralized.

Too many of them. Cover. Keep them pinned down.

Then she…  
I didn't let myself hear it at the time. The training took in the information and quarantined it. No father can hear his daughter screaming, "Daddy!", and not rush to her aid come hell or high water or his very important job.

So the part of me that was a father didn't get to hear it in the moment.

Only over. And over. And over again. In the hospital bed. In the fevered dreams of recovery.

But at that moment? One tango down. A flesh wound; not enough to stop me. One still to go.

It echoed down the corridor again. It settled in the dark places, to return there later, when the moment was over. I didn't even look back.

I didn't even look back, and I didn't even realise who I was defending.

The look on the target's face was enough. If he thought the other target was higher value than me, then it probably was. 

After all, this was what I was trained for.

I got him at the same time he got me, but nobody was coming to save him, and I was trained for this.

Like the cry, I didn't feel it, in the moment. My body was irritatingly unresponsive, and everything was unreasonably difficult, but I knew my objective. 

Immediate area secured. Check on the principals.

Principal Two was in the box, so that was where I needed to be.

"Let me go!"

Principal Two was in the box. The tangos were down. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else.

Until they made me stop, and the world folded in on itself and let me hear it.

Over and over and over again.

Every night.

\----

**Time the Third: That Time I Isolated Her In A Cabin For Six Years**

Out of the things I screwed up, this was the one I really screwed up.

I should have just told her.

But no. After all that time dreaming of how I didn't protect her, about how I was a bad father, I wasn't going to let the bad things in.

Of course that didn't help. It never helps.

She's better than me, though. She didn't dwell on it. She didn't whinge all that much. She didn't try to run away.

She didn't stop being herself, either.

That axe handle. I let her think that I hadn't noticed it. She didn't have much privacy; a teenage girl needs her secrets where she can get them.

I brought her everything I could think of, anything she asked for, but I'd limited her horizons.

It was easy to get away with it when she was ten. In some ways I kept it that way. I don't really know how to feel about that.

Once I found out that the wolf didn't know she was alive, what was I meant to do? You can't keep a secret in Washington. You can't keep a secret almost anywhere, these days.

I don't really know how to feel about a lot of things.

Rescuing people was a good job, but it was never enough. I could never rescue her. I could never rescue myself.

Feelings were never really my job; nobody trained me in how to be a father.

\----

**Time The Fourth: That Time I Let Logan Come And Stay With Us Then Flew Off Into A Storm**

You might have thought I'd learn from Time The Third, but I thought it was all going okay.

Maddie seemed to be happy. She was certainly healthy. She was very well read. She was alive.

And then the call came in.

I thought that… 

I thought a lot of things.

I thought he cared about his son as much as I cared about my daughter.

I thought she would be happy to see someone her own age, that it would be a nice surprise.

I still thought surprises were capable of being nice.

I didn't know how to tell her.

I thought that I had to save everyone.

So of course I said yes. I mean, for a start, you don't say no to the President. And especially once you have had the training that I already walked away from once - you don't say no to the President.

And I didn't tell her.

And I let her jump to the wrong conclusion. I didn't do it on purpose this time. I was just getting slow - or, more likely, she was getting fast.

I tried to make it normal. 

I forgot that I had more practice at making it normal than she did.

I'd been rescuing people. We had a lot of fairly formal conversations, sometimes quite tense, because I hadn't got there in time or brought the thing they really wanted.

She'd been stuck in a cabin where her choices were talking to me, or to the walls, or the bears.

I only just started to realise just how badly I had screwed up Thing The Third when she told Logan that the only reason someone would come here was to be punished.

I'd thought - I'd really thought - I'd genuinely thought she was happy. That we were doing okay.

And I tried to rein her in, because in the moment all I wanted was to be back in control of the situation.

And then I just. Kept. Sticking my foot in it.

I couldn't be in control of the situation. I would never be in control of the situation again.

I tried to be extra nice to her, to make up for sticking my foot in my mouth repeatedly. I even ignored the call when it came in. 

But when she gave me permission, I clung to it even though I wasn't sure she continued to really mean it.

And I tried to leave without waking her up.

And that was when she started trying to save me.

Even though I gave her an out - even though I tried to work out what was wrong, too little, too late - she never stopped trying to save me.

\----

**Time The Fifth: That Time I Got Captured And She Had To Rescue Me**

"Get out of here, Mad."

She wouldn't run away.

She hadn't run away before and she didn't run away now.

She had clearly inherited my stupid propensity to run towards.

This was no time for thinking. She wanted to have fun? Then I'd have some fun and assume she was going to follow my lead.

I had kind of assumed that by getting this far, she had dealt with the guards.

It's just as well that I have a lot of blood to lose.

Somehow I can never say the right thing. I tried to reassure her and it just made her cry.

Then she asked me for permission.

I didn't even know what she was asking me for permission about. I didn't care. She had earned anything she wanted. Just by being her, and then again by putting up with me, and then again by refusing to let me go.

And finally I apologised, for ruining her life, for not even trusting her with the details.

But she was busy trying to save me.

\----

**Time The Sixth: What Maddie Did Next**

Hospital is… not a good place.

I mean, nobody likes it. But after what happened to me. The dreams. The guilt. The failure… 

She never let me feel like a failure.

I kept apologising. It was like I couldn't see her without apologising. Yes, she had grown up well, but I felt like she'd done it despite me.

She told me that she understood.

She told me that she would have done the same.

She told me that she would have tried to hide me, if she had known, if I hadn't hidden us.

I didn't go back to Alaska. She pointed out that I had done a lot of emergency medicine out in the wilderness. That after all I'd done, an EMT cert would be a doddle.

That she knew that I couldn't stop saving people, and once I'd recovered I could do it again.

That she knew it was a long road back to health and being useful, but she also knew I wouldn't be able to rest without at least giving it my best shot.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised how well she knew me, even though I had hidden myself, like an idiot.

She wouldn't like it if she heard me calling myself an idiot. 

That's her job, she'd say.

Maybe, one day, she'll make me believe in myself again.

After all, if she can do all of that - then she can do anything. Right?


End file.
